re: BAMA football stuff - Practice, Day 1

Some from Saban's press conference:

"It was great to get started today," he said. "Really been pleased with the team chemistry and the attitude with this group of players that we have. We had very good summer, offseason work."

-- "When you have a young team, I think you're going to basically do how well your team learns to execute on a consistent basis," he continued. "I think that's probably one of the biggest goals that we have in this fall camp. We're going to have a lot of young players, a lot of opportunity for a lot of young players to play and have a role on the team."

-- What's he expecting tonight? "How the young players learn, and most of those guys are all going to practice tonight," he said. "So we don't have a feeling for that right yet. And how much carryover do we have with the players that went through spring practice and now come back in the fall?"

-- Why split practices? "I always thought it was good in the old days when you could practice with the freshmen for a few practices so that you could sort of teach them and sort of eliminate some of their anxieties about going out to practice the first time and being around those guys they didn't know very well that knew more about what was going on than they did and they end up in the back of the lines. They don't maybe get as many turns because they're in the back of the lines. This way if we can take 50 players to practice this morning and 50 players to practice tonight, all the young players will be able to practice tonight. So the focus of our attention will be on those young players."

-- As he said at SEC Media Days, Saban stressed that Alabama has no new injuries to report.

-- Nothing new on "the guy who hasn't reported yet."

-- Blake Sims did not practice this morning but will work with the younger crew this evening. He will split time at both quarterback and running back. "We'll certainly make sure that we look at the option of allowing him to develop what he can do at quarterback," Saban said.

-- Saban said he hasn't held traditional two-a-days since he was at Michigan State. Alabama does have a few days where it will practice twice, but there's plenty of separation between them.

"Our theory is, we want guys to eat two meals and drink twice to rehydrate between every practice," he said. "We try to make up for the time that we're not on the field with meeting time, teaching, walk-throughs, visual aids that players can get a visual perception of what you're trying to teach them.


"We feel that sometimes that's just as effective, and we end up with more of our players on the field because we have less guys have issues, whether they're injuries or heat problems."


-- Running back Eddie Lacy "did everything today," but "he hasn't done a lot of cutting." Saban said Lacy took every rep he was supposed to take in practice today and didn't seem to have an issue.


-- At this point, there are no known position experiments taking place this fall. "Once we sort of get a little better picture of some of the young players, especially the new freshmen, the 17 or 18 guys that are here for the first time that weren't here in the spring, I think maybe trying to figure out if they're capable of having a role on this team, what is that role?"


"I feel pretty comfortable with the rest of the players on our team that have been in the program that we have them in the right spots."

-- Offensive lineman Arie Kouandjio, who has been hampered by a number of injuries, "had a very good summer." The goal is to get him ready for the first game of the season.

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